Need advice reviving my pepper plants!!😭

I ate some really yummy peppers one day and decided to grow them. They were doing very well, but I had to leave for a few days and they FULLY dried out on me. I needed to transfer it to a bigger pot as it was getting root-bound, so it dried out really quick and the leaves fully crumpled up and and fell.

I'm trying my best to revive them, and the roots didn't look necessarily dead and were whitish brown as its been less than a week since it dried out. I watered it thoroughly, removed it from the pot, and repotted it in a bigger, pre-watered pot (the soil in the other pot i had was hydrophobic so I mixed it with some water to rehydrate it) for the roots to spread out. I also trimmed off most of the branches and all the leaves because there was no way my plant was recovering them, and I didn't want it wasting energy on dead leaves.

I also trimmed some of the stem to see if it was still alive, and the stem is green up to that point so I have hope. Also burried a bit of the stem because it was trying to grow roots further up the plant, so its a bit shorter.

I'm so distraught, this plant was SO heathly and happy. Did I do this correctly? When might I see new growth (if any)? What should I do differently next time and what did I do right? Any advice is appreciated 😭🙏 I'm kind of a new plant parent so I'm still learning a lot.

The first picture is what they looked like before I left, the second picture is what they looked like before I transplanted, the third is what it looks like now, and the fourth is what the roots looked like. Lighting is a bit weird on the fourth, sorry, pls ignore😭